Book Fucking Talk

[PrinceofNothing]

My dad sent me those to read... how bad is it?

As pointed out above, Rothfuss is terribly long-winded but I would say his cardinal sin is his character writing. Kvothe suffers from the worst aspects of Gary Stue syndrome, his central struggle seems to be having to live with his immense talent, his relationship with...Denna? and the nine other harem anime girls in his life is cringeworthy and he frankly comes across as a whiny brat, the delusion of a secret king merely imagining himself to be the hero of the tale. I don't consider Rothfuss to be talentless, there are very exciting segments like the rampaging Forest Drake and Kvothe's search for a band of bandits, I also find his central villain (the Chandrian) and another ancient evil (the Ctheah) well conceived and suitably terrifying. Overal, the narrative is long-winded, we still don't really have a feel for the setting after over a thousand pages, the characters are YA tier and his conception of the warrior Anoine betrays a staggering deficiency in his insight into human psychology.

I have also enjoyed my Moorcock, and War Hound remains one of my favourite fantasy novels. A lot of his other books are carbon copies of each other - I came fairly late to Hawkmoon, and based on previous Eternal Champion novels, found it laughably predictable - here is your decadent empire, here is your cheeky companion, and here is your distant love interest, at the same exact part of the story as every other Eternal Champion story. I stopped reading him there and then.

I'll have to check out War Hound, it looks interesting. I like Moorcock for his colorful palettes, his strange planes, his bizarre antagonists. There is something about the portrayal of the creatures of Chaos under Moorcock that has never been successfully replicated. Most of his stories seem to follow the same pattern with minor variations (The Eldren are decadent but benevolent and overthrow humanity with Ereköse's help and Corum exists in a plane with two warring elder races) and his characterizations are weak but his imagination is lurid and bright. The Fhoi Myore, the Beast-mask wearing Techno-Sorcerous Empire of Granbretan, the proto-melnibonean horrors of R'lin K'ren A'a, the brigand-musician Laat, the Shapechanging Sorcerers Agak and Gagak and their battle against the Eternal Champion with the multiverse at stake...these are the vistas that I look for when I read Moorcock.

In particular, the reviewer's note that modern fantasists write with a dreary modernism was particularly striking (also pointed out by Ursula K Le Guin in her late 70s essay, "From Elfland to Poughkeepsie").

Amen, and she is one smart dame for pointing out the importance of dialog as a gateway to the nature of a character. One thing that struck me as genius about Tolkien is the way each character in the Lord of the Rings sounds different. There is a dignity, nobility and grace to the heroes and conversely, there is a baseness and cruelty to the villains that is simply not present in something like Sanderson's Mistborn, which keeps reminding me of the Avengers for this reason. I think I am also adding "unique and complex magic system" on my list of "terrible modernist fantasy sins that suck the wonder out of the world."

 

[squeen]

Sorry for a non-fantasy tangent, but Orson Scott Card's "Ender" series is such a perfect example of what PoN was saying about an author attempting "more serious literary writing" and poisoning the well. All of his sequels were awful beyond belief!

As an impressionable youth, reading comic books, I was perplexed: "Why is popularity the kiss-of-death to quality?"

The only theory I've been able to formulate over the decades (as an outsider to the creating-art-for-mass-consumption process) is that the money people notice, take over and shout:

"Freeze! Nobody touch that cash cow! Now, we want more of the same---exactly like that!"

The creator who was originally following his/her internal muse in obscurity, is pushed to the side to
a) count the cash
b) bemoaning the loss of creative control
c) live with the fear/knowldge that they were a one-trick pony
which frequently combine into a self-destructive spire.

Gee. Aren't I a ray of sunshine.
Happy Tuesday.

 

[TerribleSorcery]

Like Thomas Harris after Silence of the Lambs blew up!

 

[PrinceofNothing]

Sorry for a non-fantasy tangent, but Orson Scott Card's "Ender" series is such a perfect example of what PoN was saying about an author attempting "more serious literary writing" and poisoning the well. All of his sequels were awful beyond belief!

Hah, fortunately I have only read Ender's Game, which I consider an almost perfect novel. Perhaps I should consider pawning off the several sequels I picked up second hand over the years unread, like I did with my John Scalzi's and Ed Greenwoods, though a friend of mine assures me that his second book is still pretty good. I'm creating room on my shelfs and in my soul by selling off shit fantasy or sf novels that I will never read or reread, nor inflict on anyone else. Thus far I have parted with an A.C.C Crispin, a complete set of Rowena Corey Daniels, a Troy Denning, a series of Dragonlance books, an omnibus of godawful super hero stories, a Diablo novelization and a City of Heroes novelization. Absolute shite. I should probably just sell all of my fucking Drizzit Do'urdens too, and a part 3 of the Duncton Tales that I picked up for free on a market during King's Day. I feel clean.

Edit: Also absolutely recommend anyone sell/burn Faffhrd'and the Grey Mouser's last book like I did, the Knight and Knave of Swords, so fans of Leiber may simply deny its very existence and commence the healing process.

Man I bought (and read) some absolute trash when I as a teenager.

The only theory I've been able to formulate over the decades (as an outsider to the creating-art-for-mass-consumption process) is that the money people notice, take over and shout:

"Freeze! Nobody touch that cash cow! Now, we want more of the same---exactly like that!"

The creator who was originally following his/her internal muse in obscurity, is pushed to the side to
a) count the cash
b) bemoaning the loss of creative control
c) live with the fear/knowldge that they were a one-trick pony
which frequently combine into a self-destructive spire.

C is optional but absolutely destructive. There is nothing like an author whose work gets picked up and novelized who is subsequently forced to live in the shadow of his single achievement, toiling away in vein to capture lightning in a bottle once more.

 

[squeen]

...I'm creating room on my shelfs and in my soul...

Pure poetry!

 

[squeen]

I am going to put another plug in for A Night in the Lonesome October by Roger Zelazny. Yeah, it's a bit whimsical in that it written from the point of view of various magical familiars, but the backdrop is pure Lovecraftian Cthulhu Mythos goodness. There were also a few Zelazny short-stories I really loved too, but I can't see to find them anymore.

Never read the Amber series.

 

[PrinceofNothing]

I am going to put another plug in for A Night in the Lonesome October by Roger Zelazny. Yeah, it's a bit whimsical in that it written from the point of view of various magical familiars, but the backdrop is pure Lovecraftian Cthulhu Mythos goodness. There were also a few Zelazny short-stories I really loved too, but I can't see to find them anymore.

Never read the Amber series.

I discovered Zelazny through Lord of Light, which to this day remains one of my all-time favorite Science fiction novels, alongside Dune and Hyperion. Amber is...awesome. It's one of the few instances I can think of where what is essentially kitchen-sink fantasy is actually approached with a degree of intelligence and coherence and the end result is something unique in the realm of fantasy. I can't think of anything that remotely resembles it.

 

[PrinceofNothing]

New stuff:

Corax; Lord of Shadows (Guy Haley) - My first of three Horus Heresy reads. HH is the best. Unfortunately this one leaves you lukewarm. 200 pages that feel like 140 pages with the criminally large margins and white pages is barely enough to explore the central concept of Corax endangering the Campaign against the Carinae Sodality to persue a warlord that uses ancient bio-weapons to weaponize his own population against the imperium, but the novel also seeks to explore tensions on the Ravenguard Homeworld AND introduces the Ravenguard Genetic Flaw; the Sable Brand, which causes you to go all mopey. You end up with a bit of fluff coupled with some interesting descriptions but nowhere enough time to explore any one of these three, let alone all of them. Not the worst of the Primarch series, but its not going to win any hearts and minds outside of a very niche audience.

The Well of Ascension (Brandon Sanderson); My life is a hell, even in my escapism of choice I am tormented with mediocrity. Sanderson somehow manages to write a 700 page novel that doesn't start until around page 500. I have discovered a new flaw to this Epic; the essentially static nature of the action. There are no pilgrimages to faraway lands, there is little to discover geographically and the whole of the setting's Final Empire feels interchangeable in the extreme. There is plenty of mystery and more spectacular action to keep you from collapsing into somnolescence but reading the characters something becomes abundantly clear. The Mistborn trilogy is a YA series with a push-up bra, a bacardi breezer lemon and too much make-up, trying to act edgy and cool in front of the adults so it can join the big boys fantasy club.

The Storm Lord (Tanith Lee) - Easily the most enjoyable of the bunch, Storm Lord is a luridly purple tale of inheritance, intrigue, passion and divine decree, dripping with Sword & Sorcery goodness. While the story itself is more reminiscent of some Bronze Age Cycle of Death and Renewal, maimed kings, swaggering palace guard, lascivious harlots, steaming jungles, alabaster draconic idols, human sacrifice and ancient, savage gods turn the whole into the lovechild of Stephanie Meyer and Robert E. Howard. Lee writes beautifully, and the nomenclature fits the mood perfectly (Xarabiss, Dortharians, Lord Ahmnorh, Raldnor, Yannul the Lan etc. etc.). A violent, cruel world, inhabited by half-savages driven by their passions and lusts. The amount of couplings, harlotry and rapes in the book, while serving to amplify the S&S feel of the story, leaves one with the impression that perhaps the book was written with one hand and Lee herself would not mind overmuch to be ravished on a table by some iron-thewed, bronze-skinned conqueror with steely grey eyes, so if you are the sort of person that takes offence at this sort of thing, I'd skip this book. Also be prepared to lose track of half the side characters (I immediately confused Ahmnorh with Karthaos and could not for the life of me figure out what had happened to Lord Ohrn. Enjoyable, and there is too little S&S as it is.

"The Great upturned Bowl of the Plain's sky was drenched with the blood of sunset. The sun itself had fallen beyond the Edge of the World. Now, before the Rising of the Moon, only a single scarlet Star gemmed the cloak of gathering twilight." etc. etc. etc.

 

[squeen]

The Mistborn trilogy is a YA series with a push-up bra, a bacardi breezer lemon and too much make-up, trying to act edgy and cool in front of the adults so it can join the big boys fantasy club.

You had me at "push-up bra".

Pure prose genius.

 

[TerribleSorcery]

Ok Prince (and any other Black Company fans), I finished reading it and Glen Cook redeemed himself with the Tower of Fear. It's crammed full of midnight raids, street-level goings on, plots, counterplots and triple-crosses. Carpenters, civil governors, witches, generals, mercenaries, assassins, inkeepers, tribesmen, occupiers and revolutionaries cross paths and trip over each other in a primordial middle-eastern desert metropolis with a lot of "telephone"-style skullduggery, where every party has a slightly imperfect idea of what the fuck's going on. This gave me major anxiety when Sons of Anarchy did it every single episode, but here it was great. The guy I was rooting for made it all the way to the end. Nothing more to say, holla if you like the Black Company, fuck off forever if you don't.


C.S. Friedman - "This Alien Shore": I loved her Coldfire Trilogy when I was a teenager (pretty fuckin dark, original fantasy that didn't overstay its welcome - three books and the world changes at the end, no endless saga). But TAS is a sci-fi story. Humanity has colonized the galaxy but almost everyone was terribly mutated in the process. Earth cut itself off from these "Variations" until one planet, Guera, discovered a form of FTL drive with no side-effects. Only catch is, the Gueran Outspace Guild are the only ones who can use it, giving them a stranglehold on the galaxy that Earth would do anything to break.

The protagonist is a teenage girl and I thought: oh fuck me, Mary Sue time. But Friedman does it better than most. The kid is just believably terrified most of the time as events spiral out of control. Two plotlines (the girl on the run, and the machinations of the Outspace Guild's higher-ups) graaaaadually begin to intertwine throughout the book.

All the characters were compelling, I want to hear more about the setting, and I am left wondering if I should buy Stars Without Number or something and armtwist my group into trying a space game.

Trigger warning - mild space alien sexytimes

 

[PrinceofNothing]

Book talk LIVES!

Ok Prince (and any other Black Company fans), I finished reading it and Glen Cook redeemed himself with the Tower of Fear. It's crammed full of midnight raids, street-level goings on, plots, counterplots and triple-crosses.

Hey glad to hear it. Fantasy Arabian S&S seems brimming with potential but the quantity leaves something to be desired (I have a sneaking suspicious Salahdin Ahmed sucks). I'll add this one to my brobdignagian reading list.

The protagonist is a teenage girl and I thought: oh fuck me, Mary Sue time. But Friedman does it better than most. The kid is just believably terrified most of the time as events spiral out of control. Two plotlines (the girl on the run, and the machinations of the Outspace Guild's higher-ups) graaaaadually begin to intertwine throughout the book.

All the characters were compelling, I want to hear more about the setting, and I am left wondering if I should buy Stars Without Number or something and armtwist my group into trying a space game.

Friedman is one of the few female sf authors that I have no bones about recommending. I learned of her through In Conquest Born which I found to be immensely captivating and reminiscent of Dune (no small feat, though obviously I consider Dune superior). I'm glad to hear her other books are also winners.

More fucking book talk:

The Soul of the Robot (Barrington J. Bayley) - Barrington J. Bayley is an immensely creative and talented science fiction author known mostly for his terrific short stories, but some of his long form work is very much worth reading. A self-aware Robot searches for a meaning behind his existence in the post-collapse feudal states of a civilization that once ruled the stars. Jasperodus is a compelling character, all the more so because of his ruthless and calculating nature and the at times futile nature of his triumphs, making the story as much Pinocchio as Scarface. The First Law of Robotics is that YOU NEED PEOPLE LIKE ME, SO YOU CAN POINT YOUR FUCKING FINGERS AND SAY THATS THE BADGUY. Weird and awesome, like most of Bayley's work.

Tallarn(John French) - Am I finally getting tired of Horus Heresy novels after 45 books?!? It is starting to look like it. Collection of two novellas and one short story covering the largest tank war in the galaxy-spanning civil war of the 31st millenium known as the Horus Heresy. Think Fury if it were set in the third layer of Hell and the germans were replaced with power-armored giants. The first two stories have stock characters but work because the stakes are fairly small, covering only the desperate quest for vengeance of the survivors of the initial biological warfare attack in the bombed out ruins of their homeworld. Tallarn is a grim battlefield, where victory is a bitter laugh and taking down your enemies with you as the atmosphere melts through your suits atmo-seals and reduces you to a puddle of bio-matter. The third novella is by far the largest and is dissapointing in the extreme, utilizing Warhammer Plot #3; the bad guys are looking for some sort of super-weapon to end the war but it turns out its a demon instead. In contrast, the page-long summaries of the progress of the War for Tallarn, with its descriptions of attacks involving tens of thousands of tanks, new forces, strategies and so on, is actually compelling. Would have been a decent entry if it came 20th or even earlier in the series, after all we have seen in HH, it comes across as underwhelming.

 

[TerribleSorcery]

45 books! Holy crap.

 

[bryce0lynch]

Ok, I just finished Heroes and Darkness that Comes Before.

Heroes has an interesting premise and is a terrible read. It took me almost three months because I loathed the text so much, never wanting to pick it up. I blame this for my absence.

Darkness was ok. I guess people identify with Drizzt? I thought the pedophile sorcerer was more interesting. Didn't care about the whore parts, or most of the emperor parts, until the lords started showing up and there was some back and forth. The plainsman was a bit interesting as well, but didn't find the nephew parts very interesting.

The mythology of the past, no-men, no-god, orcs and so on was intriguing though, as were the Drizzle-monks, in concept if not in execution.

I'll probably pick up book 2 since I read book one in less than a day.

 

[DangerousPuhson]

I guess people identify with Drizzt? I thought the pedophile sorcerer was more interesting.

Yeesh, probably could have worded that better, or maybe put a sentence or two to separate those statements...
*tugs uncomfortably at collar*

 

[squeen]

Heroes has an interesting premise and is a terrible read. It took me almost three months because I loathed the text so much, never wanting to pick it up. I blame this for my absence.

Finishing things dispite your dislike may very well be one of your defining character traits. It's rare I keep reading a bad book. Life it too short. (A bad movie is a much easier pill to shallow for me).

 

[PrinceofNothing]

Heroes has an interesting premise and is a terrible read. It took me almost three months because I loathed the text so much, never wanting to pick it up. I blame this for my absence.

A pity you didn't care for it. Was the dislike content or style based?

Darkness was ok. I guess people identify with Drizzt? I thought the pedophile sorcerer was more interesting. Didn't care about the whore parts, or most of the emperor parts, until the lords started showing up and there was some back and forth. The plainsman was a bit interesting as well, but didn't find the nephew parts very interesting.

If by Drizz't you refer to Anasurimbor Kellhus then I would guess not because he is too inhuman, in both outlook and ability, to be identifiable. Drusus Achamian is the most human, and most flawed, character. I don't recall him fucking any kids.

The mythology of the past, no-men, no-god, orcs and so on was intriguing though, as were the Drizzle-monks, in concept if not in execution.

I'm glad. Bakker's world-building is deep and superb. I liked the image of the No-God, a truly apocalyptic manifestation.

I'll probably pick up book 2 since I read book one in less than a day.

I always wonder how people do this. I read a page per minute.

Entries for consideration

The Moon Flower (James P. Hogan) - Suprisingly terrible entry, considering it was placed on the recommended book shelf of a Canuck bookstore I frequent. Humankind discovers a planet where communism works (perhaps this is why was placed here), but its plausible because it requires magical time-travelling radiation. Some scientists go there and desert because they are non-conformist. Then nothing happens. Hogan should be lauded for predicting a racially divided america, fractured and lorded over by corporations, which rings true, but the plot twist that the people of the planet Cyrene can co-operate because of time-travelling bio-waves comes apropos of nothing and the death-star esque action scene involving an orbital weapons platform forms the book's only moment of tension. Hogan has a lot of interesting speculation, but he requires practice in turning those ideas into something worth reading. Dull.

The Green Pearl (Jack Vance) - Even better (and shorter!) then the first entry in the Lyonesse series, Vance continues to amaze. King Aillas, ruler of Troicinet and Dascinet, becomes Lord of South Ulfland and strives to unite its warring lords into an army to drive out the Marauding Ska. The wizardly escapades of Tamurello, Murgan, Melancthe and Shimrod continue unabated, across different planes and the lands of the Elder Isles. Comedy, Drama, the Epic and the Tragic are seamlessly blended in a manner that is incredible, considering the paltry efforts of subsequent authors to imitate this form. Epic Fantasy is fucking hard and Jack Vance is a master. 'Nuff said.

The Knights of the Limits (Barrington J. Bayley) - While I am a fan of some of Bailey's longer works, he is at his mightiest when wielding the short story. Eschewing speculation on the social front, Bayley conceives of myriad alternate realities where the very laws of physics are different from what we know and often can conceive, resulting in magnificently creative, if somewhat inaccessible, sf. A philosopher is visited by a creature from a universe where space is divided into discrete spaces like a chessboard. Humanity huddles in a city in the infinite nothing, the universe of its birth long dead. A planet where each creature can genetically modify its offspring. A universe filled with solid matter instead of emptiness, with tiny pockets of oxygen where life can exist. A britain ruled by an uncomprehending Alien monarch. Down-beat endings for a peerless fantast. Sign me up.

 

[bryce0lynch]

A pity you didn't care for it. Was the dislike content or style based?

If by Drizz't you refer to Anasurimbor Kellhus then I would guess not because he is too inhuman, in both outlook and ability, to be identifiable. Drusus Achamian is the most human, and most flawed, character. I don't recall him fucking any kids.

Heroes: Both, I think. The premise was interesting and a few of the chapters read well. Overall, though, I felt it degenerated in to "first they did this and then this and then this and then this and then this ..." turning it in a pseudo-biography, a boring one at that. The Wallenstein chapter was particularly bad, falling in to that pattern AND failing to note the connections and significance between events. Further, the premise was, I believe "you have to rebel against society to be a hero", failing to note the heroes who did NOT rebel against society. IE: you're either an idealized version of a society ... or what a society yearns for.

Darkness: Yes, Kellhus, written as the Mary Sue, lacks the ability to identify with. Further, in that, the character is boring. One note, no arc, etc. Acha, being the most flawed yet TRYING is indeed the most interesting. Maybe I misread, but it seemed like he had love affairs with all of his students? Or maybe he had older students.

 

[PrinceofNothing]

Heroes: Both, I think. The premise was interesting and a few of the chapters read well. Overall, though, I felt it degenerated in to "first they did this and then this and then this and then this and then this ..." turning it in a pseudo-biography, a boring one at that. The Wallenstein chapter was particularly bad, falling in to that pattern AND failing to note the connections and significance between events. Further, the premise was, I believe "you have to rebel against society to be a hero", failing to note the heroes who did NOT rebel against society. IE: you're either an idealized version of a society ... or what a society yearns for.

My takeaway from Heroes was the dualistic nature of society's relationship with its Heroes, who by their very nature cannot be fully compatible with the civilisations they exemplify. I suppose the weakest example in Heroes was Cato, who was a staunch and principled supporter of the Republic against Ceasar, though certainly not without his flaws. Even Cato is more of a defender of the ideal of the Republic then anything that existed at the time.

The Wallenstein chapter was one of the most compelling, but I can admit to a bias because the subject matter (the Thirty Years War) kind of fascinated me, but I can see your point how the significance of each separate event could be explained more clearly.

Darkness: Yes, Kellhus, written as the Mary Sue, lacks the ability to identify with. Further, in that, the character is boring. One note, no arc, etc. Acha, being the most flawed yet TRYING is indeed the most interesting. Maybe I misread, but it seemed like he had love affairs with all of his students? Or maybe he had older students.

I think the term Mary Sue only works in a certain context and Kellhus falls outside of it as he is not meant to be likable nor identifiable, being as much a subject of terror as adoration. To be fair, based only on the first book, I can see where that judgement comes from. I think you may have misinterpreted that passage about Drusus Achamian having trouble because he cannot help himself from being friends with his agents as him doing the gay with all of his underage students.

 

[The1True]

Or maybe he had older students.

[Spoiler Alert] One way or the other, he shags his (adult) daughter later on anyway so...
It's pretty interesting the reversal that happens as you start out liking Kelhus and hating Cnaiur and by the end you're taking refuge in Cnaiur's savage humanity.

 

[The1True]

I really liked Jesse Bullington's 'Tragic Tail of the Brothers Grosbart'. His fantasy 'Crimson Empire' series under the Alex Marshall pen name was pure escapist, grimdark, D&D goodness.

Also, the guy who wrote Altered Carbon', Richard K. Morgan wrote a pretty awesome gay-Elric in the 'A Land Fit for Heroes' trilogy.